


Five Gold Rings

by lindsey_grissom



Category: Battlestar Galactica (2003), NCIS, Sneakers (1992), The X-Files, Torchwood
Genre: Canonical Character Death, Crossover, F/M, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-12-18
Updated: 2009-12-18
Packaged: 2017-10-10 14:57:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,020
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/101013
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lindsey_grissom/pseuds/lindsey_grissom
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Four that didn't happen but should have, and one that did.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Five Gold Rings

**Author's Note:**

> Written as part of a 12 Days of Christmas Challenge for [multicolour](http://archiveofourown.org/users/deserts/works).

**F**

When she wakes up, the ring is already on her finger. She blinks until she can see everything more clearly and it's still there. Gold and shining at her, twinkling in the dim morning light.

She wants to frown in confusion but her heart beats too happily for the emotion to settle for long.

She wonders why she didn't wake, she isn't a heavy sleeper. Although, truthfully she isn't that surprised; she trusts him with her life, trusting him with her body is almost as easy.

She brings her hands up to her face, twists the ring around her finger. She hasn't worn a ring there and yet, it feels comfortable, familiar.

Slipping from the bed, she walks to the tall windows, slipping between the curtains to look out. The streets of Paris are covered in a carpet of white snow that wasn't there the day before. It seems to be a morning for the appearance of new things.

She turns away, letting the curtains fall back into place. She isn't worried about waking up alone. He'll be back, she knows. He gave her is ring.

 

**I**

When she thought about it - the very rare times that she let herself - she usually imagined some kind of obscure metal, something he would state emphatically was of unknown _{read: alien}_ origin. She figured that somehow, maybe, that would make the whole thing more likely. He didn't go in for her picket fences and loyal dogs, but if it could be just a little supernatural, then that was possible.

Of course, she never really believed that. He had made his feelings on the matter very clear a long time before she had admitted she cared. And she had known; their lives were never destined to go that way, separate or together, no matter how often they both tried to force them. Too much rested on their shoulders. Even when they came close to family, it couldn't really be that way for long _{barely a day, a night}_ before everything went back to some kind of normal and alone.

Then there was more running and hiding and the kind of pretending that hurt at times because it wasn't real. Still, sometimes she wondered and even when they were avoiding the unusual, that's what she imagined it would be.

But when it happened, when reality picked up where imagining left off it was normal and natural. He dropped to one knee in the snow and held out a little black box. The world wasn't quite ending and spaceships didn't fill the sky. Black tar didn't drip from his eyes and the ring was diamond and gold.

It was almost spooky.

 

**V**

She keeps looking at the ring. When she speaks to her Mum on the phone, she looks at it. When she stops at the lights on the way to the _ClubHouse_ she studies it in the morning light. When she takes it off to wash the dishes - because sometimes she makes an actual meal for the guys and they don't just order takeout - she turns it over and over with her fingers.

Crease assures her that it wasn't stolen and Mother has been known to mutter that he just knew she would have wanted 'the other one'. Whistler just smiles at her and she wonders if sometimes he can hear the sound her twisting makes.

None of them really know why she has to keep looking at it. None of them have guessed that she stares at the ring because she never expected it to ever be there. That part of her still hasn't accepted that it really is and she has to see it, sometimes, to believe it.

 

**E**

He doesn't know where it came from. He knows who it came from, of course. And he was there when it was given to him, because how else could it really have gone? But he doesn't know _where_ it's from.

He thinks the others know. When he tries to search through the files, Tosh is there shutting down firewalls and claiming to be updating the system. When he slips his hands into the pockets of _that_ coat, Gwen will appear in the doorway and suggest she make the next round of coffees. He has no choice but to insist he do it instead, not if he wants the team to survive until evening. And the one time he picked up the phone to call the one person who would know, or would know how to contact _the one that would know_, Owen clapped a hand on his shoulder and announced they would spend a boy's night out. Waking in just his pants and shirt, head attempting to split apart, he had decided to leave that well enough alone.

Not that it matters, exactly, because the point is that he has it on his finger and who would ever have expected that? He hadn't. But with the job he has and the things he's seen, he's found that even the most innocuous looking object can almost end the world. He refuses to bring about the annihilation of the human race because his boyfriend proposed and won't tell him just which planet the ring is from.

He's seen one of a similar design in the little jewellers just off the Bay, but he supposes that was probably just the inspiration for the one he wears. Because that would be just too normal and simple for his partner. Of course, it might just explain the snickering and twinkling blue eyes.

 

**.**

She doesn't feel the metal slide against her cold fingers. Doesn't notice the friction of it against her skin, the tickle as he pushes it into place. She doesn't see it shine in the daylight, _{daylight}_, after so long in the dark.

But of course she has felt that, when she watched herself die on that Basestar, and everything her dead body couldn't, she felt. She felt it all so the little smile on her face when he looks at her before he does it all over again, it isn't just for _"so much life"_.

 

**End.**


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